November i, 1884.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



411 



like degree of saccharine or sugar bearing capacity in the 

 two plants, but to the more successful extraction of the 

 sugar they contain in the manufacture of the beet than 

 the cane. Were the modes of treatment of equal skill 

 and efficacy in both cases, beet sugar, there cannot be 

 much doubt, would have to take a lower position in the 

 category, notwithstanding the fiscal support accorded to it 

 in the country of its growth. Without the premium on 

 export to stimulate its manufacture, a sustaining power 

 cculd hardly have been found for the large production in 

 the part retained for home consumption. Beet sugar, until 

 of late years, could not, except in the form of refined sugar, 

 bear comparison with sugar from the cane. The raw beet 

 sugar is from the disagreeable smell and taste of the 

 molasses, unfit for consumption as human food. By skilful 

 treatment, a nearly pure white grainy sugar is now pro- 

 duced without the refiner's aid, but no grocery sugar made 

 of beet can without offence come near the cane muscavado 

 or v.p. caystals. In chemical composition, beet sugar is 

 considered to be identical with cane. Whether it is so in 

 the use also is doubtful. It is suposed to be deficient in 

 sweetening power. And yet raw baet is largely imported 

 fur our refiners, and is preferred, perhaps, to the low classes 

 of raw cane for its better preparation, as it is known much 

 less crystalli sable sugar can be obtained from beet than 

 from cane of a similar analysis. The consumer may, con- 

 sequently, be somewhat inconvenienced in pocket, and there 

 being no way of telling one sugar from the other over the 

 shop counter, it would be only fair towards him if a label 

 of distinction were introduced. Analytical figures show 

 that, in moisture and ash, no difference to speak of exists 

 between the kinds of highly refined sugar, whether beet 

 or cane. But they also show the unrefined white beet 

 sugar to be as pure, although to smell and taste it is foul 

 with the " hogo " of the beet that clings to it. If chemistry 

 cannot find out the difference of odour, neither can it of 

 sweetness. This is, perhaps, a matter of taste only, and 

 the common nolion that beet is inferior to cane may be 

 justified by fact. It is well known that all the first-class 

 jam makers and manufacturers of British wines will not 

 use sugar made from beet, however beautiful it may look, 

 or however cheap it may be. And it is to the beet in 

 the sugar of the shops, it is said, that is often owing in 

 home-made preserves the disappointment of the cook's ex- 

 pectation of a good jelly. If the difference of sweetness 

 should be 10 per cent less in the beet, it is an indirect 

 taxing of the cane to allow beet sugar to be sold as one 

 and the same thing with cane sugar, and ought to be dis- 

 continued. 



The crude materials possessed by the sugar market in the 

 cane are acknowledged to be superior to those he finds 

 in the beet, or in any other of the plants from which 

 supplies of sugar are obtained. The advantage claimed 

 for the beet is that the pulp, after exhaustion of the 

 sugary juice, furnishes the cultivator with a valuable food 

 for cattle. And it is this contributive force in stock feed- 

 ing that to the farmer forms perhaps the chief object in 

 growing the sugar-beet. Unless meat production went along 

 with sugar production, the latter alone would be barely 

 profitable. But as regards the cane, there is — to say nothing 

 of the tops and leaves, which would make good ensilage 

 like the beet tops — a set-off to the spent pulp of the 

 beet in the megass or refuse of the cane after crushing, 

 that is quite equal in value to wood for fuel to the 

 manufacturer. The megass, too, if it could be returned 

 unburnt to the land, would supply the cultivator with 

 the natural fertiliser for his plants. The produce of a 

 crop of sugar-beets in Germany is not more than ten tons 

 of washed and topped roots per acre, whilst in India the 

 native farmers are said to get twelve or thirteen tons of 

 cut canes per acre. In Jamaica the yield is supposed to 

 be from seventeen to twenty tons, and in Demerara twenty- 

 five to thirty tons per acre. In France, where the beet 

 is cultivated less for the sugar it affords, and more for 

 the advantage of the pulp to the farmer, much larger crops 

 are grown than in Germany, from twenty to thirty tons 

 per acre being a common yield. But the bigger beets have 

 inferior saccharine matter, and the deficiency of richness 

 is not compensated for by the greater quantity produced, 

 as the adverse chemical salts and other bodies inimical to 

 sugar crystallisation increase also, not only in proportion 

 to the sugar, but even to the gross weight. In quality, 



tli. juice of the cane is both purer and richer than the 

 Juice of beets. Weight for weight, the former has almost 

 double the amount of sugar that the latter possesses ; and 

 taken when the cane is fully matured, the juice is said 

 to be almost a pure syrup, ami more free from contamin- 

 ation with uncrystallisable forms of sugar than beet juice. 

 By analysis, the ripe cane is shown to contain from la to 

 22 per cent, with a mean of is per cent of sugar. The 

 beet contains from 5 to 10 and 11 percent of sugar, with 

 a mean of 7i per cent. In Germany, where the roots are 

 taxed on the weight without reference to excess in the 

 relative amount of sugar in them, the proportion has. with 

 high cultivation, risen to 1375, and even a percentage 

 of 18 appears to have been reached; but this may be 

 looked upon as a maximum of the laboratory difficult of 

 attainment, and in practice not more than 13 per cent of 

 sugar should be reckoned upon as the average in good 

 years. The cane is also a more favourable crop to eul- 

 tivate than the beet, giving less trouble, requiring less 

 labour, and suffering less from vicissitudes of the weather. 

 The cane roots send up a succession of young shoots, or 

 rattoons as -they are called, for three and four or more 

 years; whilst for the beet, an annual tilling and sowing 

 of the land is necessary; and the rattoons, taking into 

 account the shorter time of growth, may be considered 

 to J ield as abundantly as the plant canes. The great draw- 

 back in cane cultivation is that seed time and harvest 

 tall together, causing the pressure of work to be doubly 

 heavy in the season. 



Where the cane is seen to be apparently inferior to 

 the beet is in the course of extracting the juice. The 

 sugar-beet contains from 94 to 96 per cent of juice, and 

 all of it, with the exception of 5 or 6 per cent can be 

 extracted. From the cane, on the other hand, only 60 

 per cent is obtained of the 88 to 90 per cent of juice 

 that it contains. The new and enlarged mills, with roll- 

 ers of greater length and diameter, will procure a yield 

 of from 65 to 70 per cent, but the common run of mills 

 | do not get more than -15 to 50 per cent of the weighl of 

 the cane in juice. The resistance to a fuller surrender 

 of the juice is sought to be overcome by using more 

 powerful machinery on the same principle, and as much 

 as 80 per cent of juice is said to have been expressed in 

 experimental trials. But that this extra yield should be 

 secured in the crushing of a whole crop of canes is scarcely 

 to be expected. And beyond a certain point the excessive 

 power employed would not be paid for by the increased 

 quantity of juice, or the quality of what is got. The juice 

 drawn from the lighter and less complete crushing of the 

 cane is known, by the experience of the old cattle mills, 

 to be the best. That which comes away, under more 

 forcible pressure, may have a greater density, but it is 

 the objectionable salts, albumen, and fragmentary fibre of 

 the cane which increase in it. anil not the sugar. Besides 

 pressure is practically inoperative to squeeze out of the 

 crushed body of the cane the juice that it holds hygroscopic- 

 ally or retains by absorption. And it is only the wealthy 

 owners of estates who can bear the cost of these big mills. 

 No inconsiderable portion of the sugar must, therefore, 

 continue to be lost, and the full profit of the manufacture 

 fail to be got, unless a change can be made in the mode 

 of treatment, and some improved method, such as would 

 extract the saccharine matter from the cam- as effectually 

 as is done in the beet, be adopted. In the beet-sugar 

 manufacture, which began upon the plan used with the 

 cane, the old mode of extracting the juice by pressure has 

 in Germany, nearly, if not altogether, given way to the 

 diffusion process, with its auxiliary methods for saving the 

 sugar in the molassess. And in France, where roll, r and 

 hydraulic presses are still generally employed for the con- 

 venience of the farmers, who require to have the com- 

 pressed pulp returned to them, and get hack from the 

 best mills as much as 20 per cent in weight of the beet 

 roots supplied, that is from 5 to 6 per cent, of solid residue, 

 holding 14 to 15 per cent of juice diluted with IS per 

 cent of water, many of the large factories have begun to 

 substitute diffusion for pressure. That the diffusion pro- 

 cess can be applied successfully to the cane has been also 

 demonstrated. By its use ;:t the Aska works in Ganjara, 

 India. ST.', per cent of the 90 per rent of juice in the 

 cam- has been abstracted, and. according to a published 

 return, an average yield of S3.; per cent was obtained from 



